New Books in American Studies

Melvin L. Rogers, "The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Theorist Melvin L. Rogers has a deep and rich new book delving into the work of a host of different African American political thinkers. But...

Seth D. Kaplan, "Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time" (Little, Brown Spark, 2023)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The neighborhoods we live in impact our lives in so many ways: they determine who we know, what resources and opportunities we have access to, the qua...

Joseph H. Holland, "Make Your Own History: Timeless Truths from Black American Trailblazers" (Dafina, 2023)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One hundred and twenty Black leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs share their wisdom and experience across the centuries in Make Your Own History: ...

Jeremy Black, "The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History" (Routledge, 2015)

14 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History (Routledge, 2015), Jeremy Black presents a compact yet comprehensive survey of slavery and its impact o...

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair, "Space Rover" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated...

R. J. Boutelle, "The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny" (UNC Press, 2023)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As Manifest Destiny took hold in the national consciousness, what did it mean for African Americans who were excluded from its ambitions for an expand...

Paul Williams, "The US Graphic Novel" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This book analyses the way that changes in the comics industry, book trade and webcomics distribution have shaped the publication of long-form comics....

Tana Jean Welch, "Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) places contemporary poetics in dialogue with p...

Shardé M. Davis, "Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling about Racism in Higher Education" (UNC Press, 2024)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Sharde M. Davis turned to social media during the summer of racial reckoning in 2020, she meant only to share how racism against Black people aff...

Benoît Crucifix, "Drawing from the Archives: Comics Memory in the Contemporary Graphic Novel" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Following Art Spiegelman's declaration that 'the future of comics is in the past,' Drawing from the Archives considers comics memory in the contempo...

Christopher Michael Blakley, "Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World" (Louisiana State UP, 2023)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex ...

Steve Mentz, "Sailing without Ahab: Ecopoetic Travels" (Fordham UP, 2024)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When I decided to try my hand at interviewing authors for the New Books Network, one of my dream guests was Steve Mentz. Steve’s work in the environ...

Joseph M. Thompson, "Cold War Country: How Nashville's Music Row and the Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism" (UNC Press, 2024)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Country music maintains a special, decades-long relationship to American military life, but these ties didn't just happen. This readable history revea...

Sandra Fox, "The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America" (Stanford UP, 2023)

06 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic ...

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" (Bloomsbury. 2023)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, in The Big Myth: ...

Mauricio Fernando Castro, "Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Mauricio C...

Daniel de Visé, "The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic" (Grove Atlantic, 2024)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic (Grove Atlantic, 2024) tells the story of th...

Stefan Aune, "Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire" (U California Press, 2023)

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation "Geronimo" used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and images referring to Indians have been...

Naomi Cahn, et al., "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce--why women's progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competit...

Greg Jarrell, "Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods" (Fortress Press, 2024)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Greg Jarrell's book Our Trespasses: White Churches and the Taking of American Neighborhoods (Fortress Press, 2024) uncovers how race, geography, po...

Loren D. Lybarger, "Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile" (U California Press, 2020)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalis...

Diane Winston, "Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan's Evangelical Vision" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but in 1983 something changed....

Dave Mac Marquis and Moira Marquis, "Books Through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement" (U Georgia Press, 2024)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Co-edited by Dave Mac Marquis and Moira Marquis, two activists with deep experience in organizing prison books programs (PBPs), Books Through Bars: ...

Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, "Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America" (UNC Press, 2023)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses, Widows, and Runaways Shaped Modern America (UNC Press, 2023), Elizabeth Engelhardt argu...

Matthew H. Hersch, "Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle" (MIT Press, 2023)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (MIT Press, 2023), Dr. Matthew Hersch challenges the existing narrative of the most significant hum...

Teresa Ghilarducci, "Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The issue of the future of Social Security, on which millions of Americans depend, produced great political theater at the State of the Union address....

David J. Dennis Jr. and David J. Dennis Sr., "The Movement Made Us: A Father, a Son, and the Legacy of a Freedom Ride" (Harper, 2022)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"The Movement Made Us takes literature to a momentous Southern Black space to which I honestly never thought a book could take us. This is literally ...

Françoise N. Hamlin and Charles W. McKinney, "From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle" (Vanderbilt UP, 2024)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Broadly speaking, the traditionally conceptualized mid-twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement and the newer #BlackLivesMatter Movement possess some s...

Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen, "The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2024)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles...

Paul Carter, "Richard Nixon: California's Native Son" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Born in Yorba Linda and raised in Whittier, California, Nixon succeeded early in life, excelling in academics while enjoying athletics through high sc...

Jamie Goodall, "Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean" (History Press, 2023)

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1717, the Council of Trade and Plantations received "agreeable news" from New England. "Bellamy with his ship and Company" had perished on the shoa...

Sam McPheeters, "Mutations: Twenty Years Embedded in Hardcore Punk" (Barnacle Book, 2020)

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can so many people pledge allegiance to punk, something with no fixed identity? Depending on who and where you are, punk can be an outlet, excuse,...

Neil Gong, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sociologist Neil M. Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 20...

Adam Lazarus, "The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams" (Citadel Press, 2023)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It was 1953, the Korean War in full throttle, when two men—already experts in their fields—crossed the fabled 38th Parallel into Communist airspac...

SunAh M. Laybourn, "Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants" (NYU Press, 2024)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. SunAh M. Laybourn’s Out of Place: The Lives of Korean Adoptee Immigrants (NYU Press, 2024) explores the experiences of Korean adoptees, the l...

Rachel S. Gross, "Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America" (Yale UP, 2024)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rachel S. Gross's Shopping All the Ways to the Woods (Yale University Press, 2024) tells the fascinating history of the profitable paradox of the A...

William W. Parsons and Regina M. Matheson, "The Pink Wave: Women Running for Office After Trump" (NYU Press, 2023)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How and why the election of Donald Trump inspired more women to enter politics. Donald Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential e...

Why, How, and Who to Marry: A Conversation with Brad Wilcox *01

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox *01 delves into some of the popular wisdom surrounding marriage and tells us what the data has to say: ...

Maggie Hennefeld, "Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema" (Columbia UP, 2024)

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries w...

Emily Conroy-Krutz, "Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations" (Cornell UP, 2024)

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (Cornell University Press, 2024) illuminates the crucial place of re...

George S. Takach, "Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America" (Pegasus Book, 2024)

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A vivid, thoughtful examination of how technological innovation—especially AI—is shaping the tensions between democracy and autocracy during the n...

Tim Lanzendörfer, "Utopian Pasts and Futures in the Contemporary American Novel" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tim Lanzendörfer's Utopian Pasts and Futures in the Contemporary American Novel (Edinburgh UP, 2023) highlights the emergence of a literary mode, s...

John William Nelson, "Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent" (UNC Press, 2023)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The birchbark canoe is among the most remarkable Indigenous technologies in North America, facilitating mobility throughout the watery world of the Gr...

John William Nelson, "Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent" (UNC Press, 2023)

23 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The birchbark canoe is among the most remarkable Indigenous technologies in North America, facilitating mobility throughout the watery world of the Gr...

Anelise Hanson Shrout, "Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the Rise of Transnational Philanthropy" (NYU Press, 2024)

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Famine brought ruin to the Irish countryside in the nineteenth century. In response, people around the world and from myriad social, ethnic, and relig...

Tonia Sutherland, "Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The first critical examination of death and remembrance in the digital age—and an invitation to imagine Black digital sovereignty in life and death....

David Ostrowsky, "Roberto Alomar: The Complicated Life and Legacy of a Baseball Hall of Famer" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Roberto Alomar was not just a five-tool Hall of Famer; he was a magician on the diamond, a generational talent whose defensive wizardry left teammates...

Heather Akou, "On the Job: A History of American Work Uniforms" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Through a variety of archival documents, artefacts, illustrations, and references to primary and secondary literature, On the Job: A History of Ameri...

Stephen Lee Naish, "Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper" (Routledge, 2024)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper (Routledge,2024), Stephen Lee Naish explores how as a director Dennis Hopper used music and sound...

Beth Linker, "Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2024)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century's worth of nude "posture" photos of college stu...

Amy Absher, "Fritzie: The Invented Life and Violent Murder of a Flapper" (U Oklahoma Press, 2023)

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One January day in 1923, a young boy came across the dead body of a twenty-year-old woman on a San Diego beach. When the police arrived on the scene, ...

Looking into the Heart of Arizona: A Discussion with Author Tom Zoellner

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona (University of Arizona Press, 2023), Tom Zoellner, a fifth-generation Arizonan, takes the reader ...

Christina Gish Hill et al., "National Parks, Native Sovereignty: Experiments in Collaboration" (U Oklahoma Press, 2024)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The history of Native people and the National Park Service in the United States is fraught. Dispossession, cultural insensitivity, and outright erasur...

Stephanie Li, "Ugly White People: Writing Whiteness in Contemporary America" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

White Americans are confronting their whiteness more than ever before, with political and social shifts ushering in a newfound racial awareness. And w...

Max Fraser, "Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class" (Princeton UP, 2023)

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated ...

Coretta M. Pittman, "Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (UP of Mississippi, 2022)

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women’s Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Coretta M. Pittman (Unive...

Xaq Frohlich on the History of Food Labeling

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Xaq Frolich, Associate Professor of History at Auburn University, about his new book, From Label to Table...

Rachel Gordan, "Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American" (Oxford UP, 2024)

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The period immediately following World War II was an era of dramatic transformation for Jews in America. At the start of the 1940s, President Roosevel...

John O’Connor, "The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster" (Sourcebooks, 2024)

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bigfoot is an instantly recognizable figure. Through the decades, this elusive primate has been featured in movies and books, on coffee mugs, beer koo...

Lisa Messeri, "In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles" (Duke UP, 2024)

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), bel...

Andrew J. Kirkendall, "Hemispheric Alliances: Liberal Democrats and Cold War Latin America" (UNC Press, 2022)

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hemispheric foreign policy has waxed and waned since the Mexican War, and the Cold War presented both extraordinary promises and dangerous threats to ...

Ellen E. Jones, "Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World" (Faber and Faber, 2024)

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why does race matter in film and TV? In Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber and Faber, 2024), Ellen E. Jones, a...

Jonathan W. White, "Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Shipwrecked: A True Civil War Story of Mutinies, Jailbreaks, Blockade-Running, and the Slave Trade (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), historian Jonat...

Myisha Cherry, "Failures of Forgiveness: What We Get Wrong and How to Do Better" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From religion to popular culture, institutions and people have shaped how we conceive forgiveness. Myisha Cherry, associate professor of philosophy, a...

Whitney Nell Stewart, "This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations" (UNC Press, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cultural memory of plantations in the Old South has long been clouded by myth. A recent reckoning with the centrality of slavery to the US nationa...

Foster Care, Family, and Social Class: A Conversation with Rob Henderson

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Kim Henderson, a recently-minted psychology PhD from Cambridge and prominent essayist, had a troubled childhood. A victim of child abuse, he w...

Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, 2023), by David Mas Masumoto. I...

Janine Giordano Drake, "The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement" (Oxford UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1908, Unitarian pastor Bertrand Thompson observed the momentous growth of the labor movement with alarm. "Socialism," he wrote, "has become a disti...

Thomas Mareite, "Conditional Freedom: Free Soil and Fugitive Slaves from the U.S. South to Mexico's Northeast, 1803-1861" (Brill, 2024)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While the literature on slave flight in nineteenth-century North America has commonly focused on fugitive slaves escaping to the U.S. North and Canada...

Korey Garibaldi, "Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2023)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Impermanent Blackness: The Making and Unmaking of Interracial Literary Culture in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2023), Korey Garibaldi explores i...

Judith Tick, "Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song" (Norton, 2023)

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) was one of America’s greatest musicians. In this major biography, Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer who Trans...

Rachel Jamison Webster, "Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family" (Henry Holt, 2023)

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey Washington, DC. That man was Benjamin Banneker, an African American mathematician, a writer...

David Savran, "Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad" (Oxford UP, 2024)

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tell It to the World: The Broadway Musical Abroad (Oxford UP, 2024) offers a look at how the Broadway musical travels the world, influencing and eve...

Amy Paeth, "The American Poet Laureate" A History of U.S. Poetry and the State" (Columbia UP, 2023)

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The American Poet Laureate: A History of U.S. Poetry and the State (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Dr. Amy Paeth shows how the state has been th...

Flora Lu and Emily Murai, "Critical Campus Sustainabilities: Bridging Social Justice and the Environment in Higher Education" (Springer, 2023)

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In response to student demands reflecting the urgency of societal and ecological problems, universities are making a burgeoning effort to infuse envir...

Sharon D. Wright Austin, "Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors" (Temple UP, 2023)

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors (Temple UP, 2023) explores black women's experiences as mayors in Am...

Reading Taylor Swift as a Cultural and Political Text

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Taylor Swift is by some measures the most popular person on the planet. Her periodic reinventions set the mass cultural ...

Sean M. Kelley, "American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865" (Yale UP, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and marin...

Ilyon Woo, "Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom" (Simon and Schuster, 2023)

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ilyon Woo's Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Simon and Schuster, 2023) tells the remarkable true story of Ellen a...

Benjamin J. Pauli, "Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis" (MIT Press, 2019)

09 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Originally published in 2019, Benjamin Pauli’s book, Flint Fights Back offers lasting insights into one of the most important drinking water-caused ...

Dariusz Tołczyk, "Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes under Western Eyes" (Indiana UP, 2023)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The most heinous Soviet crimes - the Red Terror, brutal collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, Stalin's Great Terror, mass deportations, and o...

Edda Fields-Black, "Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most Americans know of Harriet Tubman's legendary life: escaping enslavement in 1849, she led more than 60 others out of bondage via the Underground R...

Alicia Kennedy, "No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating" (Beacon Press, 2023)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A culinary and cultural history of plant-based eating in the United States that delves into the subcultures and politics that have defined alternative...

Amy Coddington, "How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race" (U California Press, 2023)

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop: Radio, Rap, and Race (U California Press, 2023) examines the programming practices at commercial radio stations in the 1...

Joanna Crosby, "Apples and Orchards Since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Showing how the history of the apple goes far beyond the orchard and into the social, cultural and technological developments of Britain and the USA, ...

Jessica Hooten Wilson, "Flannery O'Connor's 'Why Do the Heathen Rage?' A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress" (Brazos Press, 2024)

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When celebrated American novelist and short story writer Flannery O’Connor died at the age of thirty-nine in 1964, she left behind an unfinished thi...

Cristina Brito, "Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern America and Africa" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cristina Brito's book Humans and Aquatic Animals in Early Modern America and Africa (Amsterdam University Press, 2024) deals with peoples' practices...

Zhongping Chen, "Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918" (Stanford UP, 2023)

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the turbulent end of China’s imperial system, violent revolutionary movements, and the fraught...

Mimi Khúc, "dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss" (Duke UP, 2023)

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mimi Khúc is a PhD, writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She is currently the Co-Editor of The Asian American Literary Review and an adju...

Justin Owen Rawlins, "Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance" (U Texas Press, 2024)

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: “Method acting.” The first reception-based analysis of film acting, ...

Alvita Akiboh, "Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is an ambitious history of flags, stamps, and currency—and the role they played in US imperialism over the 20th century. In Imperial Material:...

Kristine M. McCusker, "Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kristine M. McCusker's book Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900-1955 (U Illino...

David P. Gushee, "Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies" (William B. Eerdmans, 2023)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do some devout Christians support authoritarian leaders who threaten the very democracies that protect religious freedoms? The resounding support ...

Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, dis...

Carly Goodman, "Dreamland: America's Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction" (UNC Press, 2023)

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be...

Alissa Quart and David Wallis, "Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World's Richest Country" (Haymarket, 2023)

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of ...

Gerald Epstein, "Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the Rest of Us" (U California Press, 2024)

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks an...

Leadership in Business, Leadership Abroad: A Conversation with Dave McCormick *96

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dave McCormick *96 has enjoyed incredible success in a wide variety of arenas: after graduating from West Point, where he competed as a varsity wrest...

Sara J. Grossman, "Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy" (Duke UP, 2023)

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy (Duke UP, 2023), Sara J. Grossman explores how env...

Judith Pearson, "Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker" (Mayo Clinic Press, 2023)

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Woodard Lasker had a singular goal: saving lives by increasing medical research. Together with her husband, advertising genius Albert, they crea...